If the frenetic pace of the holiday season begins to wear down your spirits, pop into the Needham Free library for a poetry pick-me-up. Poet Laureate and Needham resident Anne Nydam has selected four winter-themed poems to soothe the soul, all of which are wrapped in festive scrolls and are free for the taking at several stations around the library.
When trying to select the holiday gift poems, Nydam said she thought about highlighting celebrations, but in the end kept coming back to nature and birds. She also said she was looking for accessible poems that everyone could enjoy. “Because honestly, I like accessible poetry,” she said. “I was trying to mix ones that are somewhat well-known and then trying to come up with some that people hadn’t heard before. A couple of them popped right into my head, and a couple of them I went reading through books of poetry.”
After paging through a variety of tomes, she settled on “A Winter Bluejay” by Sara Teasdale, “White-Eyes by Mary Oliver,” “Winter Dark” by Lilian Moore and of course a Robert Frost selection: “Dust of Snow.” All conjure sepia-colored images and a peace found in the still of the outdoors — an ideal balm for the weary.
“A lot of people think poetry isn’t accessible,” said library director Rob MacLean. “So this is a great opportunity with the holiday gift poems. Celebrating winter is just a great way to make poetry part of your everyday life. And they’re also the perfect size to stick in someone’s stocking. So we encourage everybody to come in and take a red, blue, white and a green one and share with family and friends.”
With about six months left in her tenure as Needham’s first poet laureate, Nydam said she has more ideas than time. Since taking the position a year ago, she has already run several programs and initiatives. Taking poetry into the community, she has worked with students in the elementary schools, seniors at the Center at the Heights and with participants of the Memory Cafe and helped each group compose original pieces. She has also written her own official poet laureate work, “Home, Needham 2025” and recently completed a crowd-sourced poem titled “The Sidewalks of Needham.”
Having gotten the idea from other crowd-sourced collaborations, Nydam said she wanted to try it in Needham. “It’s the first time I’ve ever done something like this,” she said. “I have seen other people do crowd-sourced poems … but the people who submitted things were aware they were submitting to a poem so were intentional and wrote like a line of poetry. In this, people weren’t trying to be poetic.”
The project, launched at the Harvest Fair, gave people the prompt, “What makes Needham feel like home?” The library accepted written and online contributions throughout October. Nydam sorted through 90 submissions, organized them into themes, and then filled in what she calls the connective tissue. “I (had to) make all of these disparate contributions from people flow together and become a poem rather than a random collection of words and phrases.”
The result highlights the importance of community, nature and, for many people, town government. “A lot of people are really excited about how they can be involved and make a difference.”
The title reflects both the emphasis participants placed on sidewalks as well as Nydam’s own feelings. “I kind of have a soapbox about sidewalks, about how you can’t have community without sidewalks,” she said.
Within the first few weeks in his role as director, MacLean said he was handed ownership of the newly instituted poet laureate program — something not many public libraries have. Former Town Manager Kate Fitzpatrick, for whom poetry is a passion, advocated for the program and saw it come to fruition right before her departure. At Fitzpatrick’s last Select Board Meeting, Nydam read her original piece, an ode to her town and the town Fitzpatrick served for 35 years.
“It was really touching,” MacLean said. “It added to the moment of celebration of Kate’s work here in Needham.”
He said he is “over the moon” about all that the program has already accomplished and has big plans for the upcoming year, including a project to involve the community in writing poetry and showcasing original works.
“April is National Poetry Month, so we will be looking for lots of entries so we can select poems from residents and showcase them around town,” he said. “It’s a great thing to be in the last exit months of Anne’s time.” He also highlighted a poetry walk designed in collaboration with Park & Recreation, which will display Amanda Gorman’s poem “Change Sings” across several placards along the Rail Trail.
The search for a new poet laureate will begin in March. For now, Nydam leaves residents with the simple message: “Read more poems!”
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